This book highlights some key features of the Ada language, with coded examples, that are essential for getting started as an Ada programmer. It emphasizes syntax, control structures, subprogram rules, and how-to coding issues rather than design issues.

Ada Distilled is for experienced programmers new to Ada. Heavily commented example programs help experienced programmer experiment with Ada. This is not a comprehensive book on the entire Ada language. In particular, it says very little about Ada Finalization, Storage Pool Management, Representation Specifications, Concurrency, and other more advanced topics.